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Modifications to Thai electoral system

Thailand’s mixed-member majoritarian electoral system is being modified–again.

According to the Thai paper, The Nation, the number of party lists seats is being increased from 100 to 125, and the multi-seat districts in the nominal tier are being replaced by all single-seat districts.

This would make the system more similar once again to the one used from 2001 to 2006, except that I assume the list tier will remain districted (because the article says nothing to suggest that is being changed). In the 2001-06 system, the list tier was nationwide. In 2007, smaller districts for the list tier were introduced, and the nominal tier reverted, partially, to mutli-seat districts using multiple nontransferable votes (MNTV, or “block vote”).

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5 thoughts on “Modifications to Thai electoral system”

YES/NO Voting would be an interesting proposal. Suppose that in the 2K Presidential Election, you were a Nader fan or a Buchanan fan. With this proposal, you can vote for Nader and Gore or Buchanan and Bush. Also, you can vote against any candidate(s)you don’t like.

Interestingly, IIRC Thailand allows, or has allowed, a “none of the above” option for elections (not the same as plurality-Approval which Derek is advocating). Austria has a rule that if there is only one person nominated for President, the election turns into a yes/ no referendum on that candidate.

And of course their media then contacts an American expert who suggests “some kind of mixed electoral system, in which there is a substantial if not full proportionality in the distribution of votes into seats but at the same time that people can identify individual representatives that speak for them.” (But why did they phone “Stanford University democracy scholar Larry Diamond,” whoever he is, rather than someone who could explain what kind of mixed system they need?)

Wilf, however unsound his views on PR systems, Larry Diamond is one of the top go-to guys on democratic transitions.

I wouldn’t under-estimate how badly American political pundits – present company, of course, exempted – can get voting systems wrong. In 2003-04, I recall, both the Wall Street Journal AND The New Republic called for single-seat districts in Iraq’s lower house because “at-large elections mean that smaller parties can’t win representation.” Their example in both cases was… the US Electoral College. From memory, I even think both cited California with its 50+ state-wide seats. The fact that the Iraqi elections were using PR not winner-take-all was omitted. Face-palm…